


our lives (in my own hand)

by meingottlieb



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholism, Castiel is a Good Bro, Dean's later season rough patch :/, Fix-It, Gen, Grief, Magic, Mutual Possession, Sam and Cas have enough, Season/Series 02, Young!Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meingottlieb/pseuds/meingottlieb
Summary: “You won’t even tell him,” Castiel states, voice falling dead. “He’d try to stop you.”"Yeah,” Sam says. He doesn’t say anything more, and he can see Cas reach the same conclusion he did when the angel closes his eyes, hand carding through and gripping at his hair.“There’s no convincing you, is there?”“You don’t have to follow me, if you don’t want to,” Sam says quietly. “It’s my choice. I won’t drag you into it, if you don’t want it. I wouldn’t-- It’s okay, if you want to stay.”***Sam finds an old book, and makes a choice.





	our lives (in my own hand)

**our lives (in my own hand)**

He finds it in the basement, deep within the bunker’s store rooms. Feeling its slick dusty years beneath his fingers, Sam smells decaying paper and the oak of its wooden box, and he adds it to the day’s findings. He takes it with him upstairs, setting it gently among the other cracked tomes and tagged artifacts he’s found and collected in the library, and sets to work.

In his spare time, Sam’s picked up the hobby of cataloguing the bunker’s vast holdings digitally. Well, hobby is stretching it a bit-- it’s more of a habit now than anything. A distraction from the dead air between him and Dean off-cases, fostered by genuine interest and stoked by his persistent desire to avoid his brother.

It sounds harsh to put that way, but truthfully he’s exhausted. His brother’s animosity towards him and the whole damn world builds daily, seemingly, and-- while not for lack of trying-- Sam’s given up trying to get through to him. 

Sam is no stranger to the anger Dean can hold onto. Christ, far from it. But the heavy, ugly anger his brother exudes nowadays is different than the regular, life-long chip on his brother's shoulder. Dean’s resigned to the work, to hunting, maybe, and hell, so is Sam-- that’s not what’s new.

It’s the resentment. Not aimed towards him, specifically. Not really. But he’s included in its crosshairs. As is everything else, apparently, especially Dean himself. On cases, he’s focused enough: hard-edged, more serious than he’s ever been, but nothing too unbearable all considerating. They knew it could always be worse.

But it's when they’re back in the bunker, off the job that Dean’s focus turns...cold. For months, he’s been reclusive, dismissive towards everything and nothing at all. When he’s not drinking, he’s quiet, and when he is, he’s brittle with bitterness.

Sam doesn’t know how much longer he can handle it. He hates that, just as much as he hates the desire to put distance between him and the only family he had left.

Today is no different than the day before, or the one before that. Sam’s only seen Dean once today on his way back from the john, gravitating towards his bedroom as usual to sulk and drink the liquor stocks, and out of Dean’s sight, Sam can relax and resign himself to a productive day of decryption.

He looks at that book first, the one he's just added to his bounty on the carefully polished wood table in the main library room. He traces its spine, eyeing its cracked, ivy-green cover with quiet deliberation. There are no hints to its subject on its tired, blank cover, the only clue being that it’s old as hell, so after murmuring an old Wiccan charm to reveal possible object possession and finding nothing, Sam opens to its first page. There’s an introduction of sorts with, from what he can tell, is the book’s title and a small, handwritten note scrawled beneath its print. Curiously, the language isn"t English, nor any dialect that he knows of.

He sets to work, interest piqued. With Google and patience, he manages to eke out a translation for the title page.

Time spirals away from him after that.

///

His mind spins even after he tips back his third glass, chasing down the whiskey with more, and it burns richly, eating away at his thoughts like he wants it to. He closes his eyes, but the image of that _damn_ book is scalded on the back of his eyelids.

He slams the glass down on his nightstand, none too gently, and Sam blanks, mind quieting into an empty, liquor-blurred room.

Years ago, he would have said _impossible,_ and with greater thought perhaps _never._ Months ago, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But now?

He and his brother are at a jagged, stagnant impasse. Sam sometimes grieves the loss of it, the loss of his brother, even with the knowledge that his brother is alive and breathing and still here with him. That Dean doesn’t understand, doesn’t _want_ to understand why Sam feels so betrayed, why Sam can’t get over it, that things are _broken_ between them. The incident with Gadreel-- Ezekiel, whoever the _hell_ he was-- was the straw that had finally broken the camel's back. Being family doesn’t fix everything, isn’t the magic medicine that made everything bad or fucked up that they ever did insignificant. That Kevin had paid the price this time is...is something Sam can’t shake off. Can’t accept. 

Sam swallows, taking his head in his hands as guilt welled up like a wave in his chest, intensified by the alcohol. Mouth bitter, he rakes his fingers through his long hair, a sigh rasping from his throat. He's been tired for years now, but hell if it isn’t the guilt that he's still alive that's going to finally drag him down.

Dean could understand that what they have-- as brothers, as family, as...God, friends, could they ever be that? -- is broken. It's been for a long time, and no matter how Sam tries he can’t fix it, nor bring Dean to the point where his brother would want to. Shit just goes on around them, around and around, taking precedent. They’ve never had that time, never had what it took to fix what was broken. Years of shit, and at the end of it, Dean and Sam were both wrecked, crushed on impact. They were brothers, but they weren’t. Not here, not now, and hadn’t been for a long time.

And Sam...Sam knew of something now, something that could _fix_ all that.

 _Maybe,_ a voice chimes in his head.

 _Something that could_ maybe _fix it._

Sam learned a long time ago never to trust the promises of cursed things, of damned things, items of the supernatural. Their creatures, their promises, their spells and powers: they lie. He's not an idiot. But the idea that something could be done, that he could _fix_ with his hands what is wrong, haunts him. 

He thinks of betrayal again, of what Dean would think if he did this. His heart gives a squeeze in his chest. Dean would think of it as a turned coat, a spit in the face, as he did of everything that Sam tried to do for them. He would hate Sam for it, in the beginning, he would shake his fist at the sky and shout himself hoarse and maybe clock Sam in the face for making decisions that would affect them both without his say. But even with that knowledge, Sam realizes in his heart it would be worth it. That if it all went right...it would be _worth it._

Sam falls back onto his bed with an audible _flump,_ staring glassily at the ceiling, and watches the edges of his vision swirl and dance like wind moving through thin slices of water. He sighs, eyelids drawing low. He will think of it in the morning, when he can actually thinking straight, and...

He falls asleep.

When he wakes up, he finds his mind is unchanged, despite the extra heartbeat of pain blinking behind his eyes in reward for drinking the night before.

Immediately, he calls Castiel.

^ ^ ^

“No,” Castiel says, thunderously calm. He looks at Sam with something like pity and disappointment, and Sam is desperate enough to ignore it.

“Why?” he asks, exhausted and near-pleading. “Why not, Cas?”

Cas looks sad now, blue eyes low and sympathetic instead of angry. “Because time is not something for us to interfere with.”

Sam can’t accept that. “Like with the Apocalypse? Or prophecy? Since when have we ever followed the rules?”

The angel’s shoulders are bowed as if hunched beneath an invisible weight. “When the rules are broken, people suffer,” Cas whispers, in attempts to reach him with guilt if not reason. It would have worked, if Sam weren’t already wracked with it and out of options.

“People _have_ suffered. We have suffered, dammit. Cas-- Cas, Dean can barely _look_ at me anymore, and sometimes I wait for him to leave a room before I walk in because I can’t fucking stand it.” Cas wilts at Sam’s words, almost surprised, and Sam shakes his head before he can interrupt. “Everything-- everything is broken, Cas, and this book-- it’s a second chance.”

“No. It’s _wrong,_ Sam. It’s unnatural, a gamble at best-”

“Since when have we hesitated to throw the dice? All three of us-- we’ve broken the world for each other, Cas. Broken death. Why would we stop at breaking time?” He laughs, a short chuckle that's forced and horrible.

“Sam...” Cas looks away for a moment, pain etched into his features, before looking up at him with something like fear on his face. “How could you wish to do it again? Why would you want to put yourself through it again?” Years ago, Sam would be reeling at the raw thread of emotion in Castiel’s voice, but now he knows better. He and Dean weren’t the only ones that were broken.

“It doesn’t have to be the same way. That’s why I- that’s why I have to do it, Cas, if I do-- Dean and me, you-- we don’t have to be this way. Think of all the people we’ve lost. All the innocents dead...Kevin. Bobby. Your brother, Gabriel. Ellen and Jo, Ash... Fuck, Charlie-” His voice snaps in two, and he swallows away a sob.

“Sometimes- God, sometimes I can’t even _breathe_ knowing what happened to her. Now there’s a chance to keep her-- all of them-- safe, now that I can _try...”_

Cas puts up his hands, horror and disbelief starting to bleed through his voice. “Stop, Sam. We can’t do this, we can’t just- just _change_ our pasts. It goes against everything in the natural order, the ramifications could be catastrophic--”

“But they could be better than they are now,” Sam insists, voice raw. “And that’s all that matters. So why not?”

Sam looks at Cas, pleading, and the fear in the angel’s eyes reveals the war within. “Please,” Sam says. “Help me do this. Come with me.”

Castiel gawks. “C- Come _with_ you? Sam, this spell-- the magnitude of its magic is focused through the timeline of a single body, my grace isn’t compatible with my vessel empty--”

“Yes, it is,” Sam interrupts. He sucks in a breath, holding it behind his teeth. “It would work-- it would work if you were in mine. My- my body.”

Castiel looks as if he’s been slapped. “Your...” he croaks. “Sam, I-- I couldn’t.”

“I’d let you, Cas, in order for you to come with me.” He shifts at the way Castiel gapes at him. “I’m- I’m not an idiot. I’ll do it alone, if I have to, but God knows what’d I do without a mediator in the past.” He smiles weakly, fumbling for levity when the gravity of his offer starts to strangle him. “If you were...with me, in the past, the both of us... we’d would make a good team.”

“But- but _Dean--”_

“You said it yourself. Single body spell. And besides...if something _does_ go wrong...someone needs to hold down the fort.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about, Sam,” Castiel insists, iron pushing aside the shock in his voice. “Dean-- you’re his _brother,_ Sam, you’ve seen what happens to him when--”

“Dean...we’re not the same anymore, Cas. Maybe, in time, we could be...but he doesn’t want to go back to the way we were, not after all we’ve been through. He can’t- he can’t handle it. I can barely stand it as it is, just knowing the cost of what-- the fallout is too much for him. I’m just part of a past he can’t forget, and can’t face.”

“You won’t even tell him,” Castiel states, voice falling dead. “He’d try to stop you.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He doesn’t say anything more, and he can see Cas reach the same conclusion he did when the angel closes his eyes, hand carding through and gripping at his hair. 

“There’s no convincing you, is there?”

“You don’t have to follow me, if you don’t want to,” Sam says quietly. “It’s my choice. I won’t drag you into it, if you don’t want it. I wouldn’t-- It’s okay, if you want to stay.”

“This spell sends you into your past, Sam,” Castiel replies, eyes still closed and voice black with frustration. “It won’t send you to an alternate past, a different universe, a new world. It sends you to your past, in your own timeline. The moment you arrive there, you change the future. You write time with your mind in the body of your younger self, and erase the future you hail from. Your body as it is now...our present-- it ceases to exist. It becomes yet-to-pass. Only your mind, from this present, remains, projected onto the mind of your past self.” He opens his eyes, looking straight into Sam’s. “To prevent paradox, time will branch apart. The branch of time in which we stand now split off, taper and end. It will wither away. If something does go wrong...there’s no coming back.”

Sam’s gone through the science as the book explains it. He knows this is a choice he can’t take back.

“Is that a yes?” he asks, suddenly afraid not of going back, but of going alone. He doesn’t really know if he can face the past by himself. Abandoning Dean is hard enough. Failing the brother he used to have is a prospect that terrifies him even more.

Castiel stares at him, face hard. He looks at Sam, and Sam knows what he sees. He’s scared, and he’s broken down, but he’ll do it, and when Cas’s shoulders slump in defeat, what’s left of him that’s afraid of going alone cringes. He tries to resign himself to a fate alone, stomach rippling at the idea, but Castiel speaks before he can choke out a goodbye.

“Okay.”

Sam blinks, looking up at him with twisted hope and guilt.

“I’ll come with you,” Castiel says.

“Are you sure?” he whispers, giving the angel an out while he still can. He won’t drag him along if he doesn’t want it. It’s a pointless effort, if he does change the past, but so long as this is his present, he won’t hurt anyone else.

“Are you?” Castiel responds, lifting a brow with a strength Sam wishes he felt. Sam smiles again, feeling watery, and Castiel steps forward, hand slowly stretching out towards him. Sam sighs and closes his eyes, readying himself to the light and rush of possession, but starts when Castiel’s hands seizes upon his shoulder. He stumbles as the angel draws him forward, tugging his tall form into a brutal hug.

“For what it is worth, Sam,” Castiel says, as Sam’s arms wrap around him to find balance, “you and your brother have fought bravely. I’m...honored to have been at your side.”

Sam swallows around the stone in his throat, eyes burning. “Couldn’t have done it without you,” he replies, voice just shaking. It all feels like a goodbye, an end. He supposes it is. An end to who they are, right now. “You’re our family, Cas.”

Cas stiffens in his arms, emotion rending his frame tight, and Sam hugs him with equal force, almost crushing the angel against him. 

“Thanks, Cas. For everything.” As he speaks, light starts to spill into his eyes, filling up every pore with the presence of grace. His willing soul shifts in his chest, allowing, and his heart hammers with fear and adrenaline and gratefulness. Castiel’s response seems to ring through his mind in a storm of images and sounds: hell, Dean, posing for a photo, war-- Lucifer, himself, heaven, purgatory. Death, life, his brother and himself murmur throughout, constant shouts and cries and moments of laughter entwined in pain, joy, suffering, regret, and belonging. Sam’s heart shifts and bows beneath the force of Castiel’s emotions, and feeling throughout his body falls away.

 _Family._ Castiel feels the same, and so much. Love. Castiel loves them. 

Sam loves them too. It's why he has to do this.

_Are you ready, Sam?_

He opens his eyes, and the angel’s presence coalesces in his bones, warm, steady water residing beside his consciousness instead of drowning it out. Jimmy Novak’s body feels feather-light in his arms. He places the vessel gently into a nearby chair and approaches the spellbook where it sits, moving past the marvel and the feeling of angel, of _Cas,_ beside his soul.

He opens the book and begins to read aloud, mouth coppery with the taste of grace.

^ ^ ^

Sam floats. A warm, dark sea of disconnect exists beyond his closed eyes, and far away and just beside, grace spills and flows around him like a fluid ray of sunlight.

_‘Sam.’_

Cas’s voice reverberates, too loud but deeply pleasant, through the warm negative, and Sam’s mind stirs.

_Cas... where..._

He remembers, and the feeling of possession, however warm, sends up a spike of horrorfeardisgustpain _no_. The grace around him ripples beneath it, as though alarmed, and Cas’s voice spreads around him again, concerned and guilty.

_‘Sam-’_

Apology and embarrassment and relief shift through him, emotions trickling through the space like color. 

_I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t._

Castiel shifts around him, relaxing.

_‘You’re asleep. Wake up.’_

Okay.

He feels himself grow, feeling out the space around him and filling it up until his mind sinks back into a space behind closed eyes. He sighs, sensation sparking through him again, and he’s initially surprised at the ache, at the pain that lashes up inside him.

 _‘You were injured when we...landed.’_ Castiel’s voice is cautious. _‘Your past body was damaged greatly. I healed it with my grace as best as I could, without drawing attention.’_

_Drawing attention? From who?_

Castiel hesitates, going quiet in Sam’s mind, and Sam double takes.

_My past body..._

_‘Your body was empty,’_ Castiel sort of says, his voice crystal clear in the space behind his thoughts. The emotion in it is palpable, like Sam has his fingers on guitar strings vibrating in reverb, and the note he feels from Cas is uncomfortable and increasingly concerned. ‘ _When we arrived, your soul was not here. Your...your heart was still.’_

 _I’m dead,_ Sam realizes. If his soul was gone, then his past self had vacated the premises. The spell brought them...

Sam opens his eyes. Darkness meets his vision first, clearing into muted color, and he blinks at the ceiling, a groan issuing from his lips. Fuck. He hurts. His back hurts like _hell._

_‘I healed the nerve damage, but not the wound, not fully.’_

_Nerve damage..._ Sam, against his better judgement, leans up, wincing. His hand moves to his back, and he hisses a curse at the torn skin he finds beneath his bloody jacket. Blearily looking around, he brings his feet around off the edge of the bed. He remembers this room. He remembers waking up, looking in a mirror, straining to see a healed wound at his back that should have-- _did--_ kill him.

 _I know where we are,_ he thinks to Cas.

 _‘Dean was here earlier. While you were unconscious. He was...’_ Castiel goes quiet. Sam doesn’t have to imagine what he means.

_...Yeah. That why you left the wound?_

_‘He was here, up until a moment ago. I couldn’t heal your body with him watching.’_ Castiel pauses. ‘ _Dean...his voice...it was young. How...how far back did we go?’_

From where he sits, Sam looks in that same mirror from before. A young, pale faced boy greets his gaze, with familiar dark circles bruising beneath familiar green eyes. Castiel, seeing through the same lens, shifts in surprise where he resides around Sam’s mind.

_A while._

Sam haltingly gets to his feet, struggling not to tug the skin of his back. The pain fades a bit as unusual warmth kicks up in his belly, familiar in its gentleness. 

_Thanks._

_‘Of course.’_

Standing up straighter, Sam walks from the room, pausing to lean in the doorway. There, stooped over a table, sits someone who can only be Dean, white fingers clutching at the Impala’s keys. Strong, urgent concern from Castiel swells up in the back of his mind, and Sam clutches at the door frame when he sees his brother’s face.

Dean has never looked so young, or so torn apart. 

_Because I’m dead,_ Sam thinks, horror and guilt and love slamming into him. 

“Dean?” he says, voice raspy. 

Dean jerks, body snapping to attention, and he goes completely still. Slowly, his brother’s head turns, his ghostly eyes landing on Sam with disbelief. He stares, uncomprehending, and Sam's heart squeezes so, so tight. 

“Sam?” he breathes. His voice is tiny, ragged. _Young_. “Sammy?”

“Dean,” he says, taking a step forward, and Dean rises, movements juddery and trembling. His eyes shine with a dawning, overwhelming hope.

“Sammy,” he chokes. He stumbles closer, eyes glittering with tears. 

“Dean, hey-”

 _“Sam-”_ Dean throws himself forward, arms outstretched, and Sam moves inside their reach. 

“Oh my God, oh my God, _Sam,”_ Dean says, hands fisting in his coat, sobbing his name into his shoulder. “Oh my God, Sammy, God, you’re _okay-”_

“Yeah, Dean,” he says, eyes stinging as he hugs his brother tight. He hasn’t hugged Dean like this in years, and he hates Dean’s agony as much as he relishes in the feeling of his brother there, clutching at him like he matters. “It’s okay, I’m okay-”

“Sammy,” Dean gasps into his coat, tears soaking into the fabric. “Sammy, I thought-”

“I’m okay, Dean,” Sam whispers, consoling, knowing exactly how much it hurts, how terrifying it is to have been so _alone_ , and he holds his older brother closer despite the pain in his back. It feels-- he knows how much he himself needed it, knows how much Dean needs it, but he _feels--_ like home. Dean clutches at him, so tightly it hurts, taking all of Sam that he can get.

“I’m okay, I'm okay," Sam says, and he means it.

Dean’s frantic breathing eventually settles, the panic sliding into confusion as Dean leans back, naked tear tracks still marking his face. Fuck, Sam thinks again. God, he’s _so young._ “How- God, Sam, I-”

_Crap. Need an explanation._

_‘Perhaps your attacker missed your spinal cord?’_ Castiel offers softly, gingerly as though he feels like he’s intruding. He'd watched the scene in silence, concern and sympathy swirling around Sam's awareness like background noise. 

_I guess that’ll work for now._

“I...I remember Jake...coming up behind me.” Sam pulls away from his brother's arms, making his voice sound uncertain, and reaches again to his back, holding out fingers covered in fresh blood. “He- Did he stab me?”

“Fuck, Sammy,” Dean says, fear hitting his face like a car accident. “We need to get you to a hospital!”

_So they can declare me a medical miracle? I was dead._

_‘What other choice do you have?’_ Cas asks, and Sam doesn’t have a response to that.

“Yeah,” he says to Dean, and his brother grabs him, rushing him outside of the shit hotel room into the Impala with crippling urgency and gentleness. Soon they’re hurtling into town at a breakneck speed, Dean throwing paranoid glances at Sam like he’s going to die or disappear if he looks away for too long. Sam can only give him weak assurances, mind spinning between his ears.

Jesus Christ. He’s actually in the past. The spell worked, he’s here, Cas is in his _head,_ and Dean looks like a fucking kid again-

 _“What year is this?”_ Cas asks, and Sam can almost feel Cas staring at Dean through his own eyes.

 _2007,_ he thinks. _Dean’s twenty-four. I’m twenty._ Just thinking it makes his head ache. God. Almost ten years.

They make it to the ER before he can really start to unravel, and Dean all but bellows orders to the nearest poor nurse on duty, desperation making him loud and bossy as shit, and Sam would feel bad for her if he didn’t feel a little touched and a little exhausted by his brother’s concern. Sam’s guided into a room and his back is examined, but thanks to Cas, it’s healed well enough that the doctor who checks him out doesn’t even ask about spinal damage, he just gets Sam stitched up. Sam throws his sweating brother looks the whole time, just in case Dean can’t help but ask about the medical implications of coming back from the dead, and eventually it’s just the two of them alone in a hospital room, Dean staring at him with glassy eyes.

 _Fuck, what am I going to say to him?_ Sam thinks, edging towards panic, because really, he’s got nothing. Jake had been a soldier with combat training and Sam had _died,_ as in no pulse, no breathing, no _nothing_ for what was probably an impossibly long time. What explanation could he give Dean to explain this?

_I’m your brother, but I’m from the future? Our best friend is an angel, and he’s sharing my body, and it’s totally fine?_

_I’m here to save us._

Maybe that’s all he needs to say.

“ _You should be honest with him,”_ Castiel says, voice gentle, but firm. “ _He knows you. He knows something is wrong. The truth might be best.”_

Break the cycle. Tell the truth. Stop the end of the world, and save everyone from dying.

Keep Dean the brother he loves.

“You’re right,” he whispers to himself. “The truth.”

“Sammy?”

Sam looks up from the glossy hospital tile floor, and meets his brother’s scared eyes.

“Dean,” he says. “I need to tell you something.” He presses his lips together, fighting a tiny smile. “You should probably. Um. Sit down.”

x x x


End file.
